Chao, G. T., & Moon, H. (2005). The cultural mosaic: A metatheory for understanding the complexity of culture. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(6), 1128–1140.
Once upon a time in my undergraduate years, my sociology professor mentioned that society likes to categorize, because it creates a feeling of being in control. It’s easy. It’s comforting. It makes people uncomfortable and, in some cases, upset, when they are unable to categorize another person. The cultural values and identities that make up an individual are incredibly complex – so much so that a society that wants to fit individuals into neat, organized categories may find that task much more difficult. Chao and Moon (2005) propose that an individual is made up of a “cultural mosaic” and one’s cultural identity pulls from the different “tiles” – age, gender, family, religion, geography, etc. Our individual cultural mosaics are complex and made from many tiles. The question, “What are you?” has no simple answer when we are cultural mosaics.
In response to the question above, which I have heard several times throughout my life, here are my tiles.
Demographic tiles: 25 years old. My Filipino-Irish mother (who looks Italian) and Filipino-Chinese-Nicaraguan father (who looks Latino and racially unmixed) handed down dark hair, light skin, and a petite stature. Oh, and a poor aptitude for mathematics. My parents are children of immigrants. My paternal grandfather arrived in Georgia from the Philippines as a houseboy for a U.S. general. My paternal grandmother came from Nicaragua, but I can’t remember how or why. My mother’s father escaped from the Philippines soon after World War II, and her mother is a fifth-generation Irish-American and the only non-immigrant out of my grandparents. I do not speak Tagalog or Spanish, but I wish I did. I grew up eating vegetarian Filipino food and fried Nicaraguan cheese. Extended family gatherings included Filipino, Nicaraguan, Italian, Portuguese, and Samoan relatives. In the end, though, I mostly feel very American.
Geographic tiles: Born and raised in San Francisco, California. I grew up a block away from the Mission District, and lived next door to a gas station and across the street from Mitchell’s Ice Cream. My playground was in the Upper Noe neighborhood, where Sister Act was filmed. Weekends were spent at my grandparent’s house in Pacifica, five minutes away from the beach and always shrouded in fog. My elementary school, located in the Ingleside neighborhood, did not have a field for physical education activities. We ran laps in the parking lot.
When I was eight years old, my family moved an hour east of San Francisco to Antioch, CA and we’ve been here ever since. The suburbs are vastly different from San Francisco. The community is more conservative and predominantly Caucasian, although that demographic is rapidly changing with the influx of residents from San Francisco, Oakland, and Richmond. It is insanely hot – summers are vicious. Public transportation is terrible. I miss urban life.
Associative tiles: I am a shyer person, but I have my groups. The relationship with my immediate family has gone up and down – I mostly get along with them these days. My work group varies, since I’m a library substitute and work at libraries all over the county. I’m friendly with many of my coworkers, and I would consider myself friends with a handful of them. My tight-knit group of friends includes longtime friends from elementary school, high school, and college. The Seventh-day Adventist Church fills my religious tile, although I lean toward the progressive side of the church rather than the increasingly conservative side.
What a hodgepodge of tiles that make up multicultural mosaic me.
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